"Let us not dissemble, but acknowledge to ourselves how things are: there is in our family a sad difference of sentiment, and the most serious of all.
"We may speak to our mothers, wives, and daughters, on any of the subjects which form the topics of our conversation with indifferent persons, such as business or the news of the day, but never on subjects that affect the heart and moral life, such as eternity, religion, the soul, and God.
"Choose, for instance, the moment when we naturally feel disposed to meditate with our family in common thought, some quiet evening at the family-table; venture even there, in your own house, at your own fireside, to say one word about these things; your mother sadly shakes her head, your wife contradicts you, your daughter, by her very silence, shows her disapprobation. They are on one side of the table, and you on the other—and alone.
"One would think that in the midst of them, and opposite you, was seated an invisible personage to contradict whatever you may say.
"But how can we be astonished at this state of our family? Our wives and daughters are brought up and governed by our enemies!
"Our enemies, I repeat it, in a more direct sense, as they are naturally envious of marriage and family life. This, I know full well, is rather their misfortune than their fault. An old lifeless system, of mechanical functions, can want but lifeless partisans. Nature, however, reclaims her rights: they feel painfully that family is denied them, and they console themselves only by troubling ours.
"This lifeless spirit, let us call it by its real name, Jesuitism, formerly neutralized by the different manners of living, of the orders, corporations, and religious parties, is now the common spirit which the clergy imbibes through a special education, and which its chiefs make no difficulty in confessing. A bishop has said, 'We are Jesuits, all Jesuits;' and nobody has contradicted him.